And then came the dreadful day in the eleventh month when our white world was splashed with blood.
Misaki and I were sitting at the kotatsu with our dinner — steaming bowls of oden: boiled eggs and daikon, fish balls and kelp in a dashi broth — when Lord Shimizu staggered into the house, his face ashen.
He looked so dreadful even Misaki was moved from her silence. ‘Who is it?’ she asked, her voice tense with apprehension. ‘Who’ I noted, not ‘what’; she seemed to know already the news he bore.
‘Taro.’ His voice was ragged. ‘Taro is dead.’ He dropped to his knees and put his face in his hands.
‘How?’ The word tore from my throat.
When he lifted his head to answer me, I saw his eyes were red. ‘By a rōnin’s sword.’
‘Assassinated?’ Misaki whispered. She extended a hand as if to console her husband, then pulled it away uncertainly, seeming to shrink into herself.
Shimizu, his eyes closed, nodded. ‘In Yoshiwara.’
At his reply, his wife’s mouth opened in a silent scream. Her body was racked with shudders then finally she caught her breath and gasped, ‘No!’ She erupted into a storm of weeping, tearing at her hair so that it came loose and fell in disorder around her face.
I hung back, unsure how to help either of them, even as my own heart felt as if it were swelling with grief. Taro. Taro was dead.
‘Misaki, please, calm yourself.’ Shimizu’s own voice sounded barely controlled.
‘I can’t! I can’t!’ The words were shrieked. She was clearly on the verge of hysteria.
Her husband’s voice was rough as he ground out, ‘You can. You will.’
She crumpled to the floor and I sprang up and ran to her.
I knew how it must seem to Shimizu, who had lost his best friend: surely her grief couldn’t be equal to his. But Misaki had so few people in her life, and Taro had been one of the kindest. Tears were overflowing my own eyes.
‘It is my fault,’ Shimizu said, all anger evaporated.
Misaki raised her head to look at him. ‘Why do you say that?’ she asked.
‘He wouldn’t have been in that meeting if not for me. I persuaded him to join us.’ The look he gave us was almost pleading. ‘But we needed him. He’s so good at bringing people together.’
Misaki shuffled forwards on her knees to take his hands in hers. ‘No, Minoru,’ she said fiercely. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself. And at least he died honourably, serving the daimyo and the Shogun.’ For the first time in a month or more she sounded like her old self, more concerned for her husband’s suffering than her own.
‘You’re right. I’ll draw comfort from that and his family will too.’
Shimizu barely had time to mourn. Within days he was called on to return to Matsuyama to report directly to Lord Kinoyoshi, and to escort Taro’s wife Miri home.
He was away six weeks, and Misaki deteriorated rapidly in his absence.
She had retreated deep inside herself, and wouldn’t respond when anyone spoke to her, but closed her eyes or turned her head away.
Shimizu was alarmed to find her so low on his return. He sent for the doctor yet again, and yet again the doctor could find no physical cause for her decline.
‘He says it’s a problem with her nerves,’ Shimizu confided one morning as I served him breakfast. ‘I just wish I knew what was troubling her. Has she said anything to you, Kasumi? Anything that would explain this?’
Even before he had voiced it, I had been turning this question around in my head for weeks without reaching a conclusion. What could I say? That it had something to do with a letter — maybe to Isamu, or perhaps to a young man I had seen her talking to on a visit to the kabuki? That these three things — Isamu, the letter, Kenta — were connected, but I didn’t know how?
‘Does it have something to do with your visit to the shrine in Asakusa perhaps?’
I almost dropped the tray I was holding. How could he know? Of course, the servants would have told him. I could only hope that he would read the astonishment on my face as innocent. I thought quickly. I was concealing something, yet I barely knew what. And I barely knew why. Lord Shimizu was my master; it was my duty to lay everything I knew at his feet and allow him to unravel it. Yet I didn’t. To protect Misaki? Or . . . I felt my stomach knot . . . to protect Isamu? Besides, I argued with myself, what did I really know? Nothing.
I lifted my eyes to his, saw that he was watching me closely.
The answer I gave him was truthful: ‘No, sir. I don’t know what is troubling her.’
Forgetting his breakfast, Shimizu stood. With his hands clasped behind his back, he paced the reception room for some minutes, then he crossed the corridor to the room where Misaki lay supine on her futon.
‘Please tell me what it is, Misaki,’ he begged. ‘Tell me how I can help you.’
But she turned her head away.
Misaki was not the only one whose nerves were bristling, I soon discovered. After more years than anyone could remember, foreigners had set foot in Edo. Isamu brought the news to me one day when he came to see his uncle. On finding that Lord Shimizu was in a meeting in the formal reception room and couldn’t be disturbed, he came to find me.
The Shogun had agreed to grant an audience to the American consul, Townsend Harris, and his interpreter. They had travelled from Shimoda, where they had established an embassy, and were even now in the city.
I could have sworn the very air felt different once I knew.
‘What do they look like, the foreigners?’ I asked. The hair was prickling on my arms and the back of my neck. I felt both afraid and intensely curious.
‘I haven’t seen them myself, but I’ve heard that they are huge and hairy, and that their complexions are flushed pink like the belly of a salmon.’
It could have been a description of evil spirits, and for a moment I felt a twinge of sympathy for those who were fighting to keep our country free of them.
The middle of the twelfth month brought a blizzard. The snow was not so much falling as gusting across the city in drifts, carried by an icy wind. Misaki, as usual, was indifferent to the weather outside when I took a bowl of soup to her room for breakfast. I coaxed her into taking a few sips before she lay back on her bed as if exhausted by the effort. Her cheekbones were more prominent than ever and her wrists as she held the bowl looked as thin and brittle as twigs.
I spent the morning painting. A few weeks after my visit to Nihonbashi a messenger had arrived bringing some of Chika’s paintings for me to copy. I was touched to think they hadn’t forgotten me, and glad to have something to occupy my hands and mind.
When hunger began to overwhelm my concentration, I went into Misaki’s room to see if I could persuade her to eat some lunch. To my surprise she wasn’t there.
I went to the kitchen. ‘Ishi, have you seen Misaki?’
She hadn’t.
I checked the other rooms, even slipped my feet into my wooden geta and trudged through the snow to peer into the reception room at the front of the house, but it was dark and empty. Finally I went into the garden.
There I saw a figure kneeling by the pond. She was wearing only a thin cotton under-kimono, not even a jacket.
I ran over, struggling to keep my balance on the high platforms of the geta. ‘Misaki?’
She turned to me, her face tinged blue with cold, snow coating her lashes, and I stumbled as an image of Yuki-onna flashed into my mind: the beautiful spirit who could kill with an icy kiss.
‘What are you doing?’ I demanded. ‘You’ll freeze to death out here!’
Misaki’s voice was faint. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘What do you mean it doesn’t matter? Of course it matters! Imagine how your husband would feel if something happened to you.’ I lowered my voice. ‘He has lost one wife already.’
I tugged at her arm to urge her up. I was starting to shiver myself now as the cold penetrated my jacket.
The bottom of her kimono was soaked I
saw as we entered the house.
‘We need to warm you up then get you into a hot bath.’
She didn’t resist as I sat her down by the kotatsu and wrapped a quilt around her.
‘What were you doing outside?’ I scolded, half exasperated, half fearful. ‘If you’d been out in that cold any longer, you might have died.’
‘I don’t care what happens to me,’ she said dully.
‘You have to care!’ I said. All of a sudden I was so angry I clasped her by the shoulders and began to shake her. ‘Your husband is almost sick himself with worry and I — I miss you, and I’m frightened by what might happen to you. If you continue on in this way, the doctor might decide you’re insane. You could end up in a cage! Is that what you want?’
‘I . . . no.’ She looked shocked. ‘I’m not insane, Kasumi, I swear it — I just . . .’ She trailed off. ‘I just don’t know what to think, who to believe, who to trust.’ She was talking quickly now, clutching my sleeve, her eyes wide with terror. ‘Help me,’ she pleaded.
‘I will,’ I promised, though her words had sent a chill through me. What was she talking about? Who? Perhaps she really had been possessed by an evil spirit. And if that was the case, I would be powerless to help her, despite my promise . . .
Chapter
Twenty-three
The temple’s great bell
Tolling the old year’s farewells;
The first rooster crows
After the incident in the snow, Misaki did improve. As the New Year came and went — with very little celebration on our part — she made the effort to rise every day, and we resumed our morning ritual of dressing, choosing kimonos patterned with pine trees and bamboo to suit the season.
I was sixteen now and so I too wore my hair up. Always generous, Misaki lent me her favourite red comb, the one I had admired so long ago in Yabuhara, and the first time I saw myself in the mirror I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of pride. I looked older, more sophisticated — a woman. I was constantly patting the back of my head; the sensation of the weight on my head changed my posture, and I held my head more still.
Isamu, I noted, was similarly struck by my changed appearance, stopping dead at the threshold of the reception room when he saw me. ‘Kasumi, I almost didn’t recognise you.’
‘Doesn’t she look beautiful?’ Misaki asked.
‘She, uh . . . yes.’ I saw his eyes widen as he recognised the comb in my hair.
He turned his attention to Misaki. ‘I’m glad to see you looking better,’ he said, though I could tell he was taking in her wan complexion, the slump of her shoulders, the slight tremble in her fingers as she raised a hand to gesture that he should join us by the kotatsu.
But as he approached she said, ‘Actually I’m feeling quite weak. Please excuse me.’ And she hurried off to her room, leaving Isamu staring after her in dismay.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It must have hit her suddenly.’
Still watching after her, Isamu said quietly, ‘She may have improved, but she’s far from well.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I just wish I knew why she was like this. Her moods are so changeable. Maybe it has to do with the death of her mother, and then moving from Morioka to Edo and the separation from her family.’
Isamu shot me a look. ‘I’ve wondered that too — if the separation from her family has worn down her nerves.’
‘I know they’re far away, but if they knew how ill she has been . . .’
Isamu was drumming his fingers on the table top. He looked almost angry. ‘I think it’s time they were told.’ He turned to me. ‘I’m rather thirsty, Kasumi.’
‘Oh, of course. Let me get some tea.’
But when I came back, the room was empty. Then I heard voices. Padding along the wooden boards of the corridor in my socks, I approached Misaki’s room.
Isamu was saying, ‘You must send for them.’
‘No.’ She sounded frightened. ‘My husband would forbid it.’
‘Not when you’re so ill. Let me take a message to them.’
How long would it take him to get to Morioka? Yet he hadn’t hesitated to offer. He was truly the most generous —
‘But don’t you see?’ My attention was drawn back to their conversation by Misaki’s screech. ‘The messages may be the problem! And you . . . you’re part of it! Kenta said — but no . . . it can’t be. But what’s the alternative? If it’s not one, it must be the other; it’s one of the two. They must be stopped! And either way, it must be the end of me.’
‘Misaki-san, I don’t understand what you mean — you must calm yourself,’ Isamu urged.
A cool wave washed through me. She was making no sense. And her talk of endings frightened me. It was as if the Misaki I knew was waging a battle against the evil spirit who possessed her.
Suddenly Isamu burst from the room.
‘Kasumi, what are you doing here?’ He made to push past me.
‘The tea,’ I stammered. ‘It’s ready.’
‘Tea? I don’t have time for that now. I’ve just remembered there’s something I have to do urgently.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ I said.
‘What? No.’
He strode through the reception room to the entry, pausing to pull on his shoes. As he struggled in his haste to slip his swords through his belt, I put on my wooden geta.
‘You’re not coming with me, Kasumi,’ he said roughly.
‘I am,’ I said. Something was going on, something grave enough to make Misaki speak of endings, and I was determined now to unravel the mystery myself.
This time Isamu didn’t argue.
We didn’t speak as we hastened through the snow to Nihonbashi.
The old artist looked up at our entrance. ‘What do you want?’ Then he gave what sounded like a humourless laugh. ‘I don’t really need to ask, do I? I know why you’re here.’
With no sign of his previous deferential tone, Isamu snapped, ‘I’m here to talk about your daughter.’
His daughter? But I thought we’d come to talk about . . .
Then it hit me: the old man was Misaki’s father. But what was he doing in Edo? And how had Isamu known where to find them?
The old man snorted but said nothing.
‘How can you be so unfeeling?’ Isamu was shouting now. ‘Don’t you care for her at all? I bring message after message and you never respond. Do you even read her letters?’
The artist placed both hands on the low table in front of him, and slowly levered himself to his feet. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he growled.
But Isamu was beyond reason. ‘It’s no wonder she left this place. You must have driven her to it!’
The artist lunged forwards, hand outstretched as if to strike Isamu. ‘Hold your tongue!’
I repressed a scream as Isamu reached for his sword.
But the old man only sneered. ‘Ah. So it will end like this, will it? How easily the samurai can take the life of one like me.’ He dropped his hand to his side. ‘Perhaps it would be for the best.’ He was quiet now. ‘Sometimes I believe it might be the only honourable way out.’
Chastened, Isamu let go of his sword. ‘I didn’t mean . . . I apologise. I assure you, I only speak out of concern for Misaki-san. She’s not well — she has been close to death. Tell him, Kasumi.’
‘It’s true.’
I started as a voice from the shadows said, ‘Misaki is ill? What’s wrong with her?’ Kenta stepped into the room. Misaki’s brother, I realised.
‘We don’t know exactly. The doctor says her nerves . . .’
The old man just nodded, seemingly unmoved. ‘I don’t know what you want me to do about it.’
Isamu gaped at him. ‘That’s all you can say? You must go to her. I’ll take you there myself.’
The old man glared at him. Isamu glared back.
Finally the old man said, ‘Do you really not know?’
‘Know what?’
‘Father.’ There wa
s a warning in Kenta’s voice.
‘You’re meddling in things you don’t understand!’
‘Father . . .’ Kenta’s tone was soothing now. He looked at us: distraught, angry, weary. ‘Please go. It’s a pity about Misaki, but there’s nothing we can do.’
Isamu appeared to hesitate, then with a resigned shrug turned to leave.
As we walked away up the narrow lane, I said, ‘Isamu, I don’t understand what’s going on. Tell me what you know. Is this really Misaki’s home? That’s her family?’
He sagged. ‘Yes.’
‘And you’ve been secretly carrying messages to them from Misaki? What would your uncle say? He thinks they’re in Morioka.’
The look he gave me told me how blind I had been. ‘She’s not from Morioka, Kasumi. She’s from Edo.’
‘From Edo!’
‘But my uncle will be in terrible trouble if you tell anyone. No one knows she comes from Edo. That’s why she can’t come back here. I carry letters for her.’ His voice grew bitter. ‘Not that her father cares. I don’t wonder she was keen to leave such a cold-hearted man. At least my uncle loves her as she deserves.’
‘So your uncle knows about the letters.’ I was so relieved. Isamu wasn’t betraying his uncle . . . and Misaki wasn’t betraying him either.
‘Yes, they’re the only contact that can be allowed. My uncle asked me to carry them as I’m not well known in Edo. It’s less likely that people will draw a connection between the two households.’
At last I understood. Misaki had had to give up her family, her friends, her whole life. And if anyone found out, it could mean her husband’s disgrace, his dishonour . . . maybe even his life. For he had lied to the daimyo not once but twice — Misaki was not a samurai and she was not from Morioka. What a weight to carry, for both of them. My heart went out to Misaki. Did she regret her marriage? I wondered. It couldn’t be what she imagined. Her husband was rarely home. Only me for a companion. Never able to reveal the truth about who she was, always guarded. She was trapped. No wonder she was ill with nerves. She had been since seeing her brother. That was why we’d gone to the kabuki, I realised — she knew he sold prints there and was hoping to see him. Though shouldn’t seeing him have made her happy? Instead they’d argued. Over what?
The Peony Lantern Page 19